The Purchase of the North Pole

By Victor Hugo

The gun club of "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the Moon" returns after a long retirement. "The Purchase of the North Pole" brings back the three explorers who have come up with a new engineering project. If they fire a huge enough cannon, they can achieve displacement of the Earth's rotation axis. They seem to have a secret motive and we are left to wonder what they expect to achieve. Why are they not willing to give up on their plan? Have they made a huge mistake? Let's hope it's not too late to save the world from the damage one gun club can cause.-

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAGA Egmont
• Release date: Dec 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9788726506143

Victor Hugo

Victor Marie Hugo (1802–1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement and is considered one of the greatest French writers. Hugo’s best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and The Hunchbak of Notre-Dame, 1831, both of which have had several adaptations for stage and screen.

Book preview

Chapter I. The north polar practical association.

And so, Mr. Maston, you consider that a woman can do nothing for the advance of the mathematical or experimental sciences?

To my extreme regret, Mrs. Scorbitt, said J. T. Maston, I am obliged to say so. That there have been many remarkable female mathematicians, especially in Russia, I willingly admit; but with her cerebral conformation it is not in a woman to become an Archimedes or a Newton.

Then, Mr. Maston, allow me to protest in the name of my sex—

Sex all the more charming, Mrs. Scorbitt, from its never having taken to transcendental studies!

According to you, Mr. Maston, if a woman had seen an apple fall she would never have been able to discover the laws of universal gravitation as did the illustrious Englishman at the close of the seventeenth century!

In seeing an apple fall, Mrs. Scorbitt, a woman would have only one idea—to eat it, after the example of our mother Eve.

You deny us all aptitude for the higher speculations—

All aptitude? No, Mrs. Scorbitt. But I would ask you to remember that since there have been people on this earth, and women consequently, there has never been discovered a feminine brain to which we owe a discovery in the domain of science analogous to the discoveries of Aristotle, Euclid, Kepler, or Laplace.

Is that a reason? Is it inevitable that the future should be as the past?

Hum! That which has not happened for thousands of years is not likely to happen.

Then we must resign ourselves to our fate, Mr. Maston. And as we are indeed good—

And how good! interrupted J. T. Maston, with all the amiable gallantry of which a philosopher crammed with x was capable.

Mrs. Scorbitt was quite ready to be convinced.

Well, Mr. Maston, she said, each to his lot in this world. Remain the extraordinary mathematician that you are. Give yourself entirely to the problems of that immense enterprise to which you and your friends have devoted their lives! I will remain the good woman I ought to be, and assist you with the means.

For which you will have our eternal gratitude, said J. T. Maston.

Mrs. Scorbitt blushed deliciously, for she felt, if not for philosophers in general, at least for J. T. Maston, a truly strange sympathy. Is not a woman’s heart unfathomable?

An immense enterprise it was which this wealthy American widow had resolved to support with large sums of money. The object of its promoters was as follows:—

The Arctic territories, properly so called, according to the highest geographical authorities, are bounded by the seventy-eighth parallel, and extend over fourteen hundred thousand square miles, while the seas extend over seven hundred thousand.

Within this parallel have intrepid modern discoverers advanced nearly as far as the eighty-fourth degree of latitude, revealing many a coast hidden beyond the lofty chain of icebergs, giving names to capes, promontories, gulfs, and bays of these vast Arctic highlands. But beyond this eighty-fourth parallel is a mystery, the unrealizable desideratum of geographers. No one yet knows if land or sea lies hid in that space of six degrees, that impassable barrier of Polar ice.

In this year, 189—, the United States Government had unexpectedly proposed to put up to auction the circumpolar regions then remaining undiscovered, having been urged to this extraordinary step by an American society which had been formed to obtain a concession of the apparently useless tract.

Some years before the Berlin Conference had formulated a special code for the use of Great Powers wishing to appropriate the property of another under pretext of colonization or opening up commercial routes. But this code was not applicable, under the circumstances, as the Polar domain was not inhabited. Nevertheless, as that which belongs to nobody belongs to all, the new society did not propose to take but to acquire.

In the United States there is no project so audacious for which people cannot be found to guarantee the cost and find the working expenses. This was well seen when a few years before the Gun Club of Baltimore had entered on the task of despatching a projectile to the Moon, in the hope of obtaining direct communication with our satellite. Was it not these enterprising Yankees who had furnished the larger part of the sums required by this interesting attempt? And if it had succeeded, would it not be owing to two of the members of the said club who had dared to face the risk of an entirely novel experiment?

If a Lesseps were one day to propose to cut a gigantic canal through Europe and Asia, from the shores of the Atlantic to the China Sea; if a well-sinker of genius were to offer to pierce the earth in the hopes of finding and utilizing the beds of silicates supposed to be there in a fluid state; if an enterprising electrician proposed to combine the currents disseminated over the surface of the globe so as to form an inexhaustible source of heat and light; if a daring engineer were to have the idea of storing in vast receptacles the excess of summer temperature, in order to transfer it to the frozen regions in the winter; if a hydraulic specialist were to propose to utilize the force of the tide for the production of heat or power at will; if companies were to be formed to carry out a hundred projects of this kind—it is the Americans who would be found at the head of the subscribers, and rivers of dollars would flow into the pockets of the projectors, as the great rivers of North America flow into—and are lost in—the ocean.

It was only natural that public opinion should be much exercised at the announcement that the Arctic regions were to be sold to the highest bidder, particularly as no public subscription had been opened with a view to the purchase, for all the capital had been subscribed in advance, and, it was left for Time to show how it was proposed to utilize the territory when it had become the property of the purchaser!

Utilize the Arctic regions! In truth such an idea could only have originated in the brain of a madman!

But nevertheless nothing could be more serious than the scheme.

In fact, a communication had been sent to many of the journals of both continents, concluding with a demand for immediate inquiry on the part of those interested. It was the New York Herald that first published this curious farrago, and the innumerable patrons of Gordon Bennett read, on the morning of the 7th of November, the following advertisement, which rapidly spread through the scientific and industrial world, and became appreciated in very different ways:—

"NOTICE TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE.

"The regions of the North Pole situated within the eighty-fourth degree of north latitude have not yet been utilized, for the very good reason that they have not yet been discovered.

"The furthest points attained by the navigators of different nations are the following:— 82° 45′, said to have been reached by the Englishman, Parry, in July, 1847, in long. 28° E. north of Spitzbergen; 83° 20′ 28″, said to have been reached by Markham in the English expedition of Sir John Nares, in May, 1876, in long. 50° W. north of Grinnell Land; 83° 35′, said to have been reached by Lockwood and Brainard in the American expedition of Lieutenant Greely, in May, 1882, in long. 42° W. in the north of Nares’ Land.

"It can thus be considered that the region extending from the eighty-fourth parallel to the Pole is still undivided among the different States of the globe. It is, therefore, excellently adapted for annexation as a private estate after formal purchase in public auction.

"The property belongs to nobody by right of occupation, and the Government of the United States of America, having been applied to in the matter, have undertaken to name an official auctioneer for the purposes of its disposal.

"A company has been formed at Baltimore, under the title of the North Polar Practical Association, which proposes to acquire the region by purchase, and thus obtain an indefeasible title to all the continents, islands, islets, rocks, seas, lakes, rivers, and watercourses whatsoever of which this Arctic territory is composed, although these may be now covered with ice, which ice may in summertime disappear.

"It is understood that this right will be perpetual and indefeasible, even in the event of modification—in any way whatsoever—of the geographical or meteorological conditions of the globe.

"The project having herewith been brought to the knowledge of the people of the two worlds, representatives of all nations will be admitted to take part in the bidding, and the property will be adjudged to the highest bidder.

"The sale will take place on the 3rd of December of the present year in the Auction Mart at Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.

For further particulars apply to William S. Forster, provisional agent of the North Polar Practical Association 93, High Street, Baltimore.

It may be that this communication will be considered as a madman’s freak; but at any rate it must be admitted that in its clearness and frankness it left nothing to be desired. The serious part of it was that the Federal Government had undertaken to treat a sale by auction as a valid concession of these undiscovered territories.

Opinions on the matter were many. Some readers saw in it only one of those prodigious outbursts of American humbug, which would exceed the limits of puffism if the depths of human credulity were not unfathomable. Others thought the proposition should be seriously entertained. And these laid stress on the fact that the new company had not appealed to the public for funds. It was with their own money that they sought to acquire the northern regions. They did not seek to drain the dollars and banknotes of the simple into their coffers. No! All they asked was to pay with their own money for their circumpolar property! This was indeed extraordinary!

To those people who were fond of figures it seemed that all the said company had to do was to buy the right of the first occupant, but that was difficult, as access to the Pole appeared to be forbidden to man, and the new company would necessarily act with prudence, for too many legal precautions could hardly be taken.

It was noticed that the document contained a clause providing for future contingencies. This clause gave rise to much contradictory interpretation, for its precise meaning escaped the most subtle minds. It stipulated that the right would be perpetual, even in the